Building Blocks
by Penn Flinn
Summary: Caitlin, Jay, and Joe wait on the other side of the breach-but they have no idea what to expect when their friends return.


**I'm still not over "Welcome to Earth 2," so here's one of potentially a few episode tags for that one. So, minor spoilers for that episode, along with some healthy speculation. You know how I love speculation and diverging timelines.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

Time is not linear, but an accumulation of the building blocks of choices, of moments—and the 48 hour mark slips like a knife between the cracks.

The first tower of blocks finds Caitlin and Jay and Joe standing at the mouth of the recently-rebuilt Speed Cannon, checking watches anxiously. Caitlin wonders how she can do it, how she can close the breach when she knows that her friends may still be on the other side, trapped. She wonders how she can operate on such a finite system of time when all that her friends might need is a minute, two minutes more.

"They'll make it," Jay says. "I know they will."

But he's prepared to do what she's not—he's prepared to close the breach the moment they hit the 48-hour mark. Because she knows that he knows how easily 48 can slip into 49, and 50, and an eternity. An eternity of waiting.

She clenches and unclenches a hand as she watches the breach. She can't take her eyes off of it. She can't look at the clock.

 _Come on_.

Joe's muttering prayers when the breach finally opens.

"Did you miss us?" Barry says with a hearty smile, the kind that stretches easily across his entire face and bleeds up into his eyes. Caitlin finds him first and wraps her arms around him.

"Thank God," she says. Over his shoulder, she catalogues Cisco, Wells, and a young woman who must be Jesse. Jay detonates the breach, and it pops out of existence. "I was so worried."

"Easy," he says, gentler this time. "It's okay. Everything is okay."

* * *

Moments, choices, shift, and the second tower of building blocks finds Caitlin and Jay and Joe staring into the heart of the breach, not talking. Caitlin chews a fingernail, and the clock ticks a steady beat beside them. She wishes there was a way to silence it, but Jay seems to find comfort in the repetitiveness.

"They'll make it," Joe says, almost as if his words have the power to affirm some wisp of personal hope. It doesn't sound like he's talking to them. "They have to make it."

The clock's shrill, extended beep makes Caitlin jump. The one-minute mark. One minute before the 48 hours is up. She unconsciously reaches for Jay's hand and squeezes into the warmth. Either he's putting off a fever-like heat or her hands have grown colder than she'd thought.

"What do we do if they don't make it back?" she whispers to him.

He doesn't answer.

Then the breach opens, and four figures come tumbling out. Jay releases her hand on instinct and closes the breach, and Caitlin's head is whirling with the new noise, the new activity. People are shouting, but too many lips are moving for her to latch on to anything.

"Take him." It's Cisco. Cisco is in front of her. A long cut is carved out across his forehead, and a bruise is beginning to blossom on his jaw, but he hauls another body instead toward her. The red leather, the mussed brown hair, is familiar. "Zoom had him for hours. We don't know what's wrong with him. He's in bad shape."

Cisco looks like he's beyond panicking, but everything is happening so fast that Caitlin doesn't have time to panic. Barry's limp form is too heavy for her, but Joe steps in and easily takes his son in his arms. She glances back in a daze at the rest of the group—Wells, also badly bruised, comforts who she can only assume to be his daughter. The girl sits on the floor, sobbing into her hands, clearly traumatized.

In spite of it, Caitlin takes Cisco's hand and squeezes tight, a non-verbal _Thank God_ , before dashing after Joe.

* * *

The third tower, teetering on the weight of invisible choice and action, finds Caitlin and Jay and Joe mesmerized by the pulsating blue and white of the breach, the place their friends and family disappeared into just 47 hours and 59 minutes previously. The timer screams out the one-minute warning, and Caitlin is still like she's been frozen in place.

"Please," Joe mutters behind her.

She doesn't know if she can wait here another minute—she doesn't think she can be here when the clock strikes. Maybe if she leaves she will slow time down. If she doesn't hear the ticking, does the clock still run?

It's ridiculous, and she knows it. She knows how Cisco would mock her for the idea, how Barry would pretend to entertain the notion before smiling apologetically.

Deep down, she knows she can't leave this place until it's over, so she closes her eyes instead.

She hears Jay announce the thirty-second mark, and ten seconds later she hears the sound of the breach rushing open.

She opens her eyes. The breach blinks away.

Wells and Jesse embrace to one side.

Cisco stands alone.

He stares at her with helpless, apologetic, empty eyes, and the space between them is so heavy she's not sure either one of them will speak again.

* * *

In the fourth, Caitlin and Jay and Joe stand at the mouth of the Speed Cannon at the 48-hour mark.

She wonders, briefly, what collection of moments on the other side of the breach led them to this place, this hour, this choice.

She supposes she'll never know.

So she watches Jay throw the grenade, and she watches as the breach and her tower of moments, of memories, collapse at once.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! As always, please leave a comment on your way out to let me know your thoughts.**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


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